Educational equity: severe bullying complaints: local educational agency protocol.

Existing law, the Safe Place to Learn Act, requires the State Department of Education to assess whether local educational agencies have taken certain actions related to educational equity, including adopting a policy that prohibits discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying based on specified actual or perceived characteristics such as disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, or association with a person or group with one or more of the specified actual or perceived characteristics. This bill would require, on or before May 31, 2019, the Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop and issue mandatory protocol to local educational agencies, as defined, regarding how to advise schools within the local educational agencies' jurisdiction to proceed in a situation in which a severe bullying complaint, as defined, has been substantiated. Because the protocol would impose additional requirements on local educational agencies, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.